A Quarter After One
by Gemenied
Summary: It's the middle of the night in the aftermath of their big 'argument'... add-on to "Double Bind"


**Title**: A Quarter After One

**Rating**: T

**Disclaimer**: I don't own the show or the characters and I don't own the song in any of its versions.

**Spoilers**: series6 "Double Bind"

**Summary**: It's the middle of the night in the aftermath of their big 'argument'...

**A/N**: I promised new fic and here it is. This fic was inspired by Adele's (and Cyrus Tucker) rendition of the Lady Antebellum-song "Need You Now" and while listening to it I knew that it was perfect for this moment in the episode. So this is an add-on to "Double Bind" (obviously). Many, many thanks - as always - go out to ShadowSamurai83 for the beta! (read her fics! You have to!)

Enjoy.

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><p><strong>A Quarter After One<strong>

_Picture perfect memories,  
>Scattered all around the floor.<br>Reaching for the phone cause, I can't fight it anymore.  
>And I wonder if I ever cross your mind.<br>For me it happens all the time._

The room is dark, too dark now to see anything, but she doesn't switch on the light. She could find her way around blindly, which is just a metaphor for the situation she's gotten herself into. If she switches on the lights now, she will automatically see herself in the mirror above the sideboard and that would add visual shock to the emotional one she is in.

Around her in the darkness is a mess of scattered things. Papers, books, photographs, letters, a scarf. Amidst them is an almost empty bottle of Merlot and a glass. She made sure to put it away before the storm raged through her living room. It was the last sensible act, before she lost it

Her breath is still heavy, her body still shaking, her jaws clenched as tightly as humanly possible. But now the post-rage blues has set in and since she is not a crier, she sits and feels emptier than before.

She doesn't need light to see what she has thrown all over her living room, what she has ripped up. It's editorial prints of her new paper, it's even a few copies of her previous books and it's pictures. There aren't many prized possessions usually, but now...

Now she seriously considers burning them and just be done with them. With it. With him.

In all the years, all the time they've been together, and all the months she has watched his downward spiral, it has never gotten this bad. Yes, their connection, their relationship – both professionally and on a personal level – has worsened considerably. His fault mostly, but – if she is honest enough with herself, which she is in the cold, unpleasant aftermath of her tantrum – hers as well.

She didn't have to talk back yesterday. She could have just let him keep building his bubble and then burst it with a well-placed joke. But they aren't on such terms these days. Not any more.

That hurts. More than anything, in fact. It's what? 36 hours since the incident and she is still walking around in shock. It's like physical pain to do anything, think anything. Most things of daily needs are done automatically, being controlled by the spine, not her mind.

She has not tasted the food she's eaten, couldn't even say what it was. She has showered or taken a bath, but she doesn't really remember. It doesn't matter either. There is nothing that really matters.

At this moment, with her pulse still racing from the last minutes, it's only her mind and the constant loop of the same words and same sights. It's his face, the expressions as he yelled and then later, and more prominent, the stony look after her last words had left her mouth.

The sound swung in the air and despite having been said and thus gone, they seemed to circle around them, suffocating them both.

She's got through to him then, much deeper and much more cutting than she would have ever imagined. It pains her too, now and then. What she accused him of, wasn't it correct? Wasn't it true?

And couldn't the same be said about her as well?

It's something she has wondered for a while now. Even before Mel's death, but it has become worse, just as their relationship has.

In a split of the moment-idea, she reaches for the phone, wanting to know and there is only one person who can give...

But she pulls back before her fingertips even touch the plastic. What should she tell him?

_It's a quarter after one, I'm all alone and I need you now.  
>Said I wouldn't call, but I lost all control and I need you now.<br>And I don't know how I can do without, I just need you now._

The truth?

That it is the middle of the night? That she's just almost trashed her living room and the memories of their years together in a fit of drunken rage? That she wishes he was there? Being there for her? Being so unexpectedly perceptive that he'd catch her mood and with an off-colour remark make her laugh?

She's in shock. She's in pain. The truth is that as things go the number of friends outside of work is dwindling rapidly due to insane hours and her almost unhealthy commitment to work, team...and him.

That brings out the sad truth that he is her best friend and she's losing him. That she needs him more than she cares and their row might have irreparably disturbed their friendship. It seems to be no longer there and the realization makes her want to howl in pain.

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><p><em>Another shot of whiskey, can't stop looking at the door.<br>Wishing you'd come sweeping in the way you did before.  
>And I wonder if I ever cross your mind.<br>For me it happens all the time._

The lights are on, all those warmly shaded lamps providing indirect and homely light to the place. It's not the first time he has gravitated to her office today. Or yesterday. Ever since...

He's seen her stagger out and oddly enough this has stayed with him almost as much as her words. He did not see her face, did not look at her, unable to move a muscle. For moments he had possibly stopped breathing. He doesn't know really.

But he's here again, in her office, the homeliest, warmest place he knows at the moment. It's cluttered as always, so it won't look suspicious to anybody that a few more of the books are pulled from the shelves and lie haphazardly around the office.

For a few moments, he wanders over to his own to grab a glass and the bottle. A small shot will calm the rolling butterflies in his stomach, streamline his thought process. Two psychologists in two days and while the first was at least polite, both left no doubt that they consider him intellectually inferior.

Leaving her office makes him immediately feel cold and the alcohol doesn't change that. Therefore the excursion is a short one and brings back the bottle and the glass. There are more books, many books with long words and excessively many hypo-tactical sentence constructions. He reads them once, twice, thrice even, but they don't really make sense. Or he can't make any sense of them, and the more he tries the less it seems to work.

Frustrations mount as they so often do and with them, her words flash back into his mind.

There is a stab of pain in his gut and in his mind – other body parts firmly ignored – and at the same time he desperately wishes she would sit across the room, smile the way she does, and explain to him what is in those books in simple words. She used to do that, always with an amused and indulgent smile, but never impatient.

She also used to slip inside his office with glasses and one of the bottles that she keeps stashed on the shelf in here. They did that so often before, but when was the last time?

And now she's gone and...

The way to her phone is short and he quickly sits down in her chair. It's comfortable, he notices absently as he quickly hits speed dial for her home number, and he tries to ignore every nervous thought, every nervous feeling.

The ring tone resounds like the tolling of a bell, making him anticipate and dread the moment she answers, for what shall he tell her?

_It's a quarter after one, I'm a little drunk,  
>And I need you now.<br>Said I wouldn't call but I lost all control and I need you now.  
>And I don't know how I can do without, I just need you now.<em>

That it's once again far after midnight? That he has already been through half a bottle of whiskey? That he's trying to make sense of a world she has turned upside down? And that irony of ironies, literally minutes after she's walked out on him, they've pulled up a case that deals with bloody psychos?

Right after he accused her of offering absolutely no viable input to their work, they have a case where he is completely lost without her?

Life is such a bitch. It really is.

He's done the unthinkable, hit her where it hurts. The one aspect of her personality that always remained above and beyond reproach, this time he attacked it. He said the words that he might have thought in drunken sulkiness before, but never said. He's inflicted damage he might not be able to fix with a charming smile.

Her words resound in his mind and suddenly ringing true with him, ringing true, because she's told him that he is making her ill as well and that's the last thing he's ever wanted.

And maybe that's the thing he really wants to tell her.

_Yes I'd rather hurt than feel nothing at all._

Every ring tone, every second that she is not answering feels interminable. He wants her to answer, yet doesn't know how to deal with it.

Every ring of the phone is like a dagger, piercing the bubble of comfort she is slowly building for herself. She can almost – no, wants to – believe who is on the other end, but she doesn't know what to do.

_It's a quarter after one, I'm all alone and I need you now.  
>And I said I wouldn't call but I'm a little drunk and I need you now.<br>And I don't know how I can do without, I just need you now.  
>I just need you now.<em>

Time decides.

After the sixth ring the phone switches automatically to her answering machine. He starts to speak when he hears her voice, only to realize that it is the pre-recorded message. It's not her.

The realization ties his tongue, makes him flail physically just as much as emotionally.

How do you say everything that needs to be said between them in a minute-long message on an answering machine?

He's never been good with words, except those shouted in anger, and he doesn't find the ones he needs now.

In the end, he gives up and shakily terminates the call.

She hears paper rustling on the other end and a person breathing. It leaves her close to certain who is – was – on the other end.

_I just need you now.  
>Oh baby I need you now.<em>

The picture is the same in two rooms at different ends of London. One is dark. One alight with warm indirect lighting. There's a man in one room, a woman in the other.

It's after one in the morning and there are emptied bottles of alcohol and used glasses in both rooms.

And there are phones.

Both people have the impulse to use those phones. Use them and call the other. It's simple really, with inhibitions loosened by the alcohol, with the pain they both feel. Just pick up the phone and call. It would be a simple sentence. Three words. No more.

Then three more.

A few words of apology, a few words of need.

_I just need you now._

Neither makes use of the phone. Neither calls.

It's a chance thrown away. It's pain compounded by words unsaid, by wounds left open to fester, then to scab. But not to disappear.

On both sides.

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><p>Thank you for reading. Comments would be greatly appreciated.<p> 


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